“She has survived the gruelling journey from sub-Saharan Africa and now we’ve got great hopes that the male will follow and another osprey family will be born in Kielder.”

The female landed at 11.23am on Wednesday and staying for about 20 minutes, shouting, rearranging her nest and seeming to examine the view. Keepers said she looked “in need of a fish”.

While she came and went throughout the day, a great spotted woodpecker took his last chance to poke around nesting platform 2 before the vicious-beaked raptors return.

Ospreys breed for the first time at four or five-years-old and form faithful pairs for the rest of their lives.

The birds, distinctive for their habit of hovering for a few seconds over the water and then plunging feet first to the surface, were once a common sight across the North East as they swooped to pluck trout from its rivers and lakes. But by 1847 they had died out as a breeding bird in England due to decades of poaching and egg theft - and their Scottish cousins followed in 1916.

Since then they have been reintroduced to parks across the nation, with 200 breeding pairs in Scotland alone. Kielder keepers say the park - which spans 250 square miles and is England’s largest working forest - is perfect for the birds, which thrive in its mixture of treetops and lakes.